Champions Trophy Groups
 

apologies if there's a thread on this
from cricinfo

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The groups for this September's Champions Trophy in Pakistan have been announced by the ICC, and India, Pakistan and Australia have been seeded together.

Group A comprises of defending champion and top seed Australia along with India, Pakistan and the West Indies while Group B is made up of the winner of the inaugural event, South Africa, as well as New Zealand, Sri Lanka and England. The groupings were made on the basis of teams' rankings in the ICC ODI Championship table on March 12, the agreed cut-off date.

It was decided in 2005 that from 2008 the tournament would only include the top eight one-day sides exactly six months before the start of the tournament. As a result, Bangladesh, Ireland and Zimbabwe, who hold the last three places in the table, miss out.

The two groups will be played on a round-robin format with the top two sides progressing to the semi-finals. The full tournament schedule and information regarding venues will be announced by the ICC in due course.

Group A Australia (1), India (4), Pakistan (5), West Indies (8)
Group B South Africa (2), New Zealand (3), Sri Lanka (6), England (7)
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predictions anyone? say if this was to be played tomorrow?

Semi Finals-
Australia vs South Africa
India vs Sri Lanka

Final
Australia vs India (of course ;) )

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for Oz, we should go through with India..however we are with two of the most inconsistent teams that can beat anyone (arguable) on their day (mayb windies without lara ..perhaps not...but Pak is a big danger team at home too..)

Yousuf Younis Akhtar Asif and a group of young talented guys... hmmm...

A lot can happen between now and then so I'll save my predictions for a while...

true - rephrased
too tough to tell at this instance
interesitng i believe thats aussies next odi match ..the first match of this tourny

Nah, we have a 5 match ODI series in the Windies and the 3 match ODI series against the Bangers before then.

It's pretty obvious that England will win this tournament

GeraintIsMyHero is my hero. :D

oh haha, still long time then

no real testing teams in that lot..but will give us good momentum if we win i suppose lol

Saffas to win their first tournament in however long.

Wow they've even forgotten Kenya are on the ICC ODI Championship table or did they slip out for lack of matches against other teams on the table

Good. Hope we get another excellent tournament. Encouraging to see they might be planning to stick with the successful format employed last time.

BTW, for anyone who might know: are we having a seperate forum again, as in 2004 and 2006? If so, surely needs to be opened fairly promptly?

Wonder if Australia will tour tbh. Maybe Bangladesh will get a game.

Tough group.

I feel Icc should intraduce Knock Out instead of round robin format... Come on guys it looks like world cup from the second stage...

...except India and Pakistan are involved.

The tournament was a Knockout Trophy rather than a Champions Trophy in its first 2 editions. I much prefer the Champions to Knockout format, TBH. Means no-one travels all that way for 1 game.